


a dull shade of deadly

by abscission



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Blind Narti (Voltron), Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Lovecraftian Shenanigans, M/M, Merperson Lance (Voltron), Minor Ezor/Zethrid (Voltron), Some Depictions of Violence Against Fish People
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:14:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27040039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abscission/pseuds/abscission
Summary: Lotor lived his life in snapshots: a sandy beach and his tenth (his last) birthday party, blues and yellows and joy; college gates and a green lawn and meeting the girls, a kaleidoscope of potential; the docks and his father, white on purple with a healthy dose of spite; the sky and the sea from the prow of his own boat — salty, freedom-filled, and vast.And also: yellow rain-jackets and uncoiling rope and spiked harpoons held by deckhands on a flooded deck that reflects, in flashes, the fizzing electric lamps.He stares, now, at the creature making faces at him in the dimness, firelight dancing across its scales and fins. For the first time, he is both in the picture and out, and he has no idea what to do.
Relationships: Lance/Lotor (Voltron)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	a dull shade of deadly

**Author's Note:**

> This was a long-overdue work written for the 2020 Voltron Mermaid Tales earlier this year. My artist put in a lot of work, but I never found the energy to finish my part. I'm posting what I already have because it wouldn't be fair to the artist if I never posted... I hope readers can enjoy what's here.
> 
> My artist is the patient, awesome [typintypos](https://typintypos.tumblr.com/)!!

Lotor opens his eyes and has absolutely no idea where he is or how he got here.

There’s a pounding behind his eyes that means he took a blow to the head, and there’s a catch to his breath and a taste on his tongue that means he choked on seawater — but the little cave he’s in is incongruous with the above conclusions. It’s darkness as far as his eyes can see. There’s absolutely no one. His clothes have the distinct stiffness of drying while still on him. He had definitely been unconscious, and last he checked, unconscious men did not swim to underwater caves under their own power.

Where is he? He left Acxa in charge back on the boat and she’s more than capable, so at the moment he’s worried about himself.

A small driftwood fire crackles in the corner, providing precarious light. If it goes out — and the waterline is only an arm’s reach away — it would plunge the cave into darkness deep enough to drown. Instinctively, Lotor shuffles closer to the flickering light. It throws dark shapes on darker walls.

The water is still and silent. The occasional drip from unseen stalactites sends ripples to the edges, but that is the extent of movement. Nothing breaks the glassy surface, and the weak lighting only adds to the illusion of depth.

Lotor traces a finger down the dry walls of the cave. How did he get here?

*

Acxa is going to spontaneously combust from anxiety.

The engine is choked up from the storm last night, the radio is jammed, the deck’s flooded, and it doesn’t matter how skilled a mechanic Zethrid is — she can’t work miracles. They are stuck with dwindling supplies (thank heavens her boss is the paranoid type and stocked the ship or they’d have a mutiny on their hands and no way to call for help, and they aren’t in range of any ports).

They can’t even carry out Lotor’s experiment — the broadcasting equipment had frizted sometime among the wind and rain and the lightning.

Captain overboard is one thing. Crew stranded at sea is another.

*

There is absurd, and then there is _absurd_.

Lotor stares at the bundle of kelp and stone, then at the mer hauling itself out of the water, bioluminescence lighting in a blue halo. Water sloughs off both, along with the overpowering smell of fish.

Clawed hands scrabble on stone, finding grips. Scales flash, made iridescent by the firelight. It sets its elbows against what passes as a waterline and heaves itself up, splattering water all over Lotor’s dried trousers and boots. Lotor retreats until he’s pressed against the walls.

Lotor’s seen mer before, just once. It had been all tangled up in Zarkon’s (patented) weighted fishing nets — its tail fins had caught on an anchor, and all the trashing had torn open the limb; the whole deck was awash in blood and the smell of fish — it had flesh like a depth-animal, paler than marble, wrinkling as it dehydrated. It snapped and snarled and flared its fins and bared its fangs. It did not speak. Its pale green scales offered no resistance when Zarkon gutted it open. It left no corpse.

But the one Lotor is looking at?

It has skin that shines like copper in the firelight. Spots of light dot its skin like dewdrops. Two large, liquid eyes, uniformly dark, watches him from a perfectly proportioned face.

Then it grins, revealing a mouthful of sharp, jagged teeth.

Lotor’s limbs lock up. He has nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, he has nothing to defend himself with — he misses the weight of a harpoon in his hand. As it makes itself comfortable, coil upon coil of tail emerging from the black water, Lotor steels himself best as he can for an attack.

It finally stops moving. Propped up by a tail at least twice the length of its torso, Lotor can see the tiniest of disturbances some ways away in the water, too irregular to be the dripping of stalactites.

The human torso seems mockingly small.

It crosses its arms and sways on its perch, towards Lotor and away, its bioluminesce still lit: a string of blue lights dancing in the air.

Its jaw unhinges — Lotor flinches — and a sound like an untuned flute falls out. As it does so it leans further into the firelight, and Lotor can see two rows of skin (gills?) fluttering.

It frowns with its disturbingly human face. Then it rears up like a cobra about to strike — Lotor grips a shallow outcrop of stone under his hands hard to avoid another bodily reaction — but instead of advancing on Lotor, it turns towards the bundle it brought along, beginning to rummage through it.

Lotor watches it shift its attention onto the bundle. He notes the thin spines on its back, no doubt for steering. For just a second, he has a window of opportunity.

He’s tensed to— he’s not sure. Run? Punch the creature? Tackle it into the water and, what? But before he can decide, the creature twists back to face him. (It has, if Lotor is being frank, the most beautiful pattern of lights down its back he has ever seen. They overlap with each other, weave in and out, forming a pattern like the veins of an insect’s wing.)

There is something strange in its hands. A smooth, white thing that shines eerily in what light there is. The mer pops it into its mouth.

“There,” it says, grinning a shark’s grin once more, “understand me now, no-tail?”

Out of focus, the creature’s tail fin flicks the surface of the mirror-water.

Lotor tries, and fails, to maintain a grip on his astonishment.

The creature scoffs. “I’ve seen that face way too many times to be impressed. Don’t pretend you people don’t know about depth-magic.”

Struck dumb by the wider implications of his discovery, Lotor can only stare.

“Mute, are you?” Says the creature, swaying again, as though the air has a current, as though he’s not used to being still. “That can’t be right. Three hours ago you were shoutin’ so loud I could hear it clear through the storm.”

“That’s what captains are supposed to do,” Lotor replies, unable to help himself.

The response to his reply is startling. Lotor hadn’t thought the mer could light up any further (he didn’t know mer were bioluminescent five minutes ago!) but this creature’s entire body seemed to explode with light. Every pointy end of a fin had trailing lights — shoulder fins Lotor hadn’t identified as fins flares up, a trail of lights like a landing strip comes to life underneath now-translucent scales as that tail not so far out in the water makes an almighty splash. The creature lights up like a Christmas tree.

“He speaks!” It - he - crows, and dives forwards with the practiced ease of a predator, barely catching himself on the rocks in time. Lotor watches with fascination as the tail reacts violently to an underwater maneuver used on land: he writhes like a cracked whip, the trashing sending up a huge splash of water, sparkling as it catches the firelight.

Lotor forgets to dodge.

The mer has no idea how to brake in air. The tail whips back, trying to counterbalance, and Lotor has a split second to think _idiot_ , before what feels like two hundred pounds of pure muscle slams into his side even as the creature laughs - laughs! - and tries to move his coils out of the way—

Lotor feels eel-like muscle slithering over his arm and leg as the mer rolls across the rock floor to get back to the water. Fins flail in his face. His other side hits the rock wall. The coat sleeve, caught, tears across the shoulder seam.

There’s another splash — the fire flickers, dimming.

Lotor freezes.

He picks himself up carefully, only letting out the held breath when the driftwood fire keeps going strong. Then he sees the mer, flat on his belly, feeding the fire. The movements are jerky, unfamiliar. It takes Lotor a second to guess: the dry and the heat are painful to be near.

That little bit of vulnerability is the tipping point.

“What are you doing here?” Lotor asks. “What happened to me? How are you talking?”

A majority of the mer’s tail has returned to the water. His shoulder fins have collapsed. He raises himself a little bit higher via the one coil he kept on land, as though unconsciously. “I saved you. And I expect that debt to be repaid.”

*

“Boss.”

Acxa turns, bracing herself for bad news. Ezor never used that tone loosely.

The boatswain is pointing out into the open sea, binoculars on offer. Acxa takes it, follows the pointing finger.

At first, she sees nothing. Then a wave dies, and a yellow raincoat floats into view.

The only raincoat not accounted for from the storm. The raincoat that could’ve only belonged to their captain.

Grimly, Acxa hands off the binoculars. Grips the guardrails instead, because she needs an outlet, and better her grip then a pair of essential equipment.

“What do we do now?” Ezor asks, worried.

The flying drone is broken, so search and rescue is out of the picture, loathe as Acxa is to say it. But it’s not as if they have enough functioning equipment to move on. Where would ‘on’ even be? Back to port? Zarkon might just blast them out of the water when he catches wind of them, it’s an entirely plausible situation. No. Staying where they are until repairs are made is the best course of action.

“How did he even go overboard?” Zethrid comes over. Her face is smeared with engine grease. Then, to Acxa, “I got the engine working, but we can’t push her too hard or we’ll really be dead in the water.”

Well, good news at last. Acxa breathes out. At least they can go somewhere. “And the specialized equipment?” She asks.

Zethrid shakes her head. “Still workin’ on that. Got them monkeys greasing their elbows like hell on the other stuff, though,” she says, then gestures with a hand upwards. Sure enough, two of her crew are hard at work tinkering with the radio. “I’ve told them if they can’t salvage that, they can take it apart for scrap. I picked my guys smart enough to be able to cobble together a homebrew radio if push comes to shove. Don’t worry, boss.”

“Then we’ll keep anchored for another two hours,” Acxa says. Then, relaxing enough to let herself joke around, “You two never called Lotor ‘boss’.”

“Nah,” Ezor says, shrugging. “He’s more of the princey kind, you know? Mister McFancy-pants. Less bossing, more lounging.” Then she sobers. “He’ll be back, mark my words. If a storm takes out the venerable Lotor Sinclair I’ll eat the cat.”

Zethird side-eyes her. “You’re lucky Narti is downstairs. She’d have your hide for that.”

—Oh. “I should go check on her. Been so busy with stuff on-deck,” Acxa runs a hand through her hair, making sure the clips are still in place. They more than figuratively hold her together. Her grandmother gave them to her. Her grandmother, who practically raised her, in the cramped and rundown little seaside cottage. She made the hair clips — said the four pieces of black scales were a gift from the ‘deep creatures’. These hair clips were Acxa’s only remaining keepsakes of her grandmother. When the Cult of the Deep excommunicated her… Let’s not go into that.

They were her fuel and her anchor, and if her hair’s that tiny bit more blue than’s natural with the clips in, she passes it off as dye.

(As Acxa hurries away, Ezor can be heard exasperating, “I’m a vegan, Z. It was hyperbole.” followed by a fond chuckle and, “Chose the wrong line of work, didn’t’cha.”)

*

Lotor remembers now.

It’s as though his mind had been on black and white and then someone spilled a jar of Technicolor.

The orange of the prow lamp; the grey of the gathering storm clouds; the black-blue-green of waves rising and crashing and rising and sweeping; the electric white of lighting bolts as they smote the waves around the ship —

“Did you cause the storm?” Lotor demands, but even agitated and on his feet, all the mer has to do is leverage a little more tail and Lotor feels dwarfed again. That tail never ended.

In fact, it almost makes Lotor doubt his memories. That mer his father caught… It was a mer, wasn’t it? But that one’s tail was- well. It’s gradually becoming clear how little Lotor actually knew about the mer, how little anyone’s is. Those ‘advisors’ sitting by his father’s chair, whispering new tactics into his ear? Bullshit.

(But what does he know? Maybe those advisors do know. Maybe depth-magic is just another trade secret. All he ever had as research specimens were the salvaged waste of his father’s patrol ships. All he ever had were scraps from the table.)

The mer looks surprised by the accusation. His eyes widen only to reveal more blackness. Is it just Lotor, or are the mer’s eyelashes purple? “Of course not. Do we look like wave-puppeting trench-gods to you?”

Lotor raises an eyebrow.

The mer has the decency to look guilty. He splays open his webbed and clawed hand. “That storm wasn’t natural, I’ll give you that.” He hums, a haunting, keening note that resonates around the cave. “I was following it. ’S how I found your boat.”

He’s swaying again. It’s distracting, in the sense that Lotor can’t help but compare the human parts of the mer’s physique to himself. Surprisingly enough, Lotor is bulkier. And taller, if considerations of height ended at the waist.

The mer’s crown-fins (he doesn’t have ears, Lotor notices. Instead, the mer has a pair of spiny fins that open and close and light up according to, presumably, mood.) are closed, pressing close to his skull. It gives a semblance of shape to the mess of hair that is slowly drying; the more it dried, the more Lotor isn’t sure if it is hair, or kelp, or some other thing woven into hair to give the illusion of length. Whatever it was, it reached to the mer’s waist.

“Then I saw you folks hurrying around the boat like spooked lanternfish, so I paused to laugh, but then I saw you go overboard, and my kind heart got the better of me, and here we are.” The mer shrugs.

That the mer is standing— keeping— being upright, it’s impossible to not examine the mer more closely. His arms are toned: beginning around the elbow, bronze skin morphed into more and more defined scales, iridescent and blue-toned, ending with a crystallization of the transformation in his claws. They looked sharp and hard, enough to gut him several times over.

And then his brain finally registers the mer’s words.

“Not natural?” Lotor’s voice pitched upwards enough at the end that there came the faint ripple of an echo. That he hadn’t noticed the cave’s sheer size did not help the creeping dread — for his little island of dry rock is surely only that: a little island near one end of an enormous underground cave. The cave doesn’t hold his echo for long, it is too big. The mirror-water has no reflection of its roof, it is too high. His dry sanctuary forms an inverted half-moon not because the cave is small and circular; his dry sanctuary and the driftwood fire that kept a primal fear at bay is a waxing moon because the cave is too wide — on all sides, death.

The mer snaps its violet-rainbow claws in front of Lotor’s face.

“Are you listening? I said, what is your name?”

Lotor’s mouth is still too dry. “Tell me how that works, first.” He points to the creature’s mouth. “How do you speak my language?”

It blinks. In that moment the fire flares up, and Lotor catches a third eyelid go sliding across its eyes.

He thought he’d gotten used to this mer. Evidently, he hasn’t.

“Oh,” it says, then spits out the pebble. When it next opens its mouth, a fluting, chirruping sound emerges, to which it merely shrugs, and offers Lotor the pebble to examine.

It’s perfectly smooth, perfectly rounded. A little light for a rock, but it isn’t until Lotor’s fingers trips over a part of it that’s rougher than the rest — the more he maps it by feel, the more it feels carved. Slowly, his eyes adjust enough to pick out the pebble’s real color underneath the orange of the firelight.

He flinches so hard he drops the bone-pebble.

Did— Does his father know of this? Does his father know their, know this- magic? Is this why he had been hell-bent on the hunting of mer?

The mer tilts its head heavenwards, then lowers itself to pick up the pebble. It dusts off the piece of bone, then pops it back in its mouth.

“Did you kill—” Lotor takes a steading breath. “I would like to know the character of whom I’m indebted to. If you please.”

“I didn’t kill. I didn’t need to kill. You no-tails drown in the sea all the time. All we have to do is wait, and your bones drift down to us, vengeance-filled and ripe for shaping.” It taps a cheek with a blue claw. “I made this myself. We call them talking-bones. You can have one of ours, but I don’t carry any. Plaxum will have one, except she’s two seas away and deeper down.”

Lotor looks at the mer warily. It rolls back on one of its coils then forwards again, the picture of nonchalance.

“Lotor. Lotor Sinclair.”

It smiles.

“Since you are so kind as to give me your full name,” it says, and Lotor has a sinking feeling in his stomach even as the creature reaches down to its hip and twists off a piece of scale.

That gives Lotor pause.

Holding it out between them, the creature says, “My name is—” a series of clicks and overtones that Lotor has no way of replicating “—but since you can’t say that, you can call me Lance. I am, of course, aware that this is an unequal exchange. So, I offer you a piece of myself, freely given. Dip this into seawater, and you will have my aid for one endeavor.”

There is an insistent voice that says he’s just been played. But, taking the scale and examining it in the flickering light, it reminds Lotor of something else. Another object, similar in shape, seen often enough to leave an impression… 

By the time he looks up, Lance has gone. The only sign he’s ever been here are the ripples. They hit the rim of Lotor’s little slice of dry rock, bounce back outwards, and disappear into darkness.

Lance has left behind his kelp-bundle.

*

The crew quarters aren’t the most spacious, but accommodation was worse under Zarkon. Clean bunks and good ventilation is a step up in spite of the cram, and the five of them share two cabins. Lotor, of course, gets the captain’s quarters.

Acxa knocks on the door to the cabin she shares with Narti (and Kova; technically, he’s the ship’s cat, but he likes Narti so much more than the rest of them that it might as well be her cat). When that gets no reply, she tries the door handle— not locked. Most probably Narti is listening to another paper and just couldn’t hear the door.

Narti’s seasickness and research means she spends most of her time belowdecks. Usually, Acxa plays assistant, helping dictate and transcribe and whatever else Narti a set of eyes for, but she’s been so occupied with the storm.

When Acxa enters, Narti is on the bed, headphones in. Curled up beside her is Kova, fast asleep. A hand rests on his ginger crest.

Instead of calling out, Acxa presses down on the mattress. After a second, Narti pulls out her earphones. 

Kova cracks open a yellow eye, gives them both the stink-eye, then puts his tail over his nose and goes back to snoozing.

Acxa sits down on the bed. “Hey, it’s Acxa. Sorry I haven’t checked up on you. It’s a mess on the deck.”

“What happened?” Narti says, turning to face Acxa. Her hands don’t stop moving: coiling up the earpieces, fiddling with Kova’s ears, tapping out a pattern on the mattress.

Acxa pinches the bridge of her nose, allowing herself to feel the full force of her anxiety. “The storm last night destroyed our communications equipment and swept Lotor overboard. Zethrid is fixing the ship as we speak, but we don’t have the means to look for Lotor.”

“That’s terrible,” Narti says, frowning. “As first mate you’re in charge now, correct?”

“Yeah.”

“So you won’t be helping me with the sonar?”

Acxa’s mouth twists ruefully. “No. And I was really looking forward to it too.”

Lotor’s pet project: establishing communications with the mer. He’d dissected the ones he could get his hands on and found their anatomy to support dolphin-like speech, and when his ideas were rejected by the advisory board of Sinclair Shipyard he turned to his trust fund for the cash. This expedition was supposed to put his theories to the test, but… Well, the storm’s made a mess of that plan. 

Narti reaches out a hand, and Acxa lies down on the bed so her head rests in Narti’s lap. It’s a little ritual of theirs. Narti likes touching what she can’t see, and her fingers carding through Acxa’s hair calms her. 

It appears, however, that Acxa has misread her fatigue levels — no one onboard has slept a wink last night, preoccupied with the storm and then the repairs, and with her last cup of coffee long worn off, the second Narti’s fingers touches her scalp, Acxa feels her eyelids grow heavy.

The last thing she feels is Narti’s fingers catching on her hair clips. Sleep pulls her under.

*

Beneath her, a great sunken city; above her, the colossal weight of the ocean; around her, green light that pulses in time with her heartbeat. Something thrums behind her eyes— a voice only felt in vibrations. She struggles to breathe, and her bones are making a concerted effort to leave her behind.

Her skin doesn’t fit.

There’s a burning itch in her legs.

Down below, in the murky depths and buried by the tips of crumbled spires, something awakes.

*

Acxa’s eyes fly open and she bolts upright. Then she falls off the bed.

“Are you alright?” Narti asks, when Acxa’s stopped cursing, and only then does Acxa realize the faint hissing she’d mistaken for the kettle (the kitchen is right next door) is actually Kova, baring his teeth at her from the safety of Narti’s arms. His tail is curled around his legs, his pupils blown wide open in fear.

Acxa rubs her temples. Her fingers brush against a hair clip. The roiling nausea in her stomach settles into something more manageable.

“Yeah,” she says, “I am. How long was I out?”

“Only five minutes,” Narti adjusts her grip on Kova. He’s calmed down some, but the fur on his neck is still standing up. “Did I wake you up?”

The dream felt oppressively real. The sane answer is that she’s exhausted, and her brain took her fear for Lotor and played tricks. After all, she hasn’t had such vivid dreams since she was a kid.

“I’m sorry if I did,” Narti says, petting Kova. “He just jumped into my arms and started hissing. I was worried he’d scratch you, so I pushed you away.”

“No, yeah, it’s ok, it wasn’t you,” Acxa says. “Thanks, Narti. I should probably get back upstairs.” 

“If I can help, just say the word.” 

“Of course. Thanks.”

“No problem.”

Before Acxa closes the door, she looks back. Narti is stroking Kova with one hand while the other pats around the mattress for her discarded phone, on which is probably an audiobook or a machine-dictated paper. Kova, however, is staring at her— no, staring _past_ Acxa, at something over her shoulder.

She turns to look.

The corridor is empty.

*

For a while, Lotor doesn’t dare go near the water, unsure of what else might surface. By proximity, the bundle of kelp remains untouched for the same length of time. 

When nothing else emerges from the water, Lotor gathers up his courage and inches forwards.

The kelp is surprisingly strong, and doesn’t tear. When Lotor finally unties the knot, he finds inside driftwood, rocks, and a dead fish. Upon further investigation, the fish is the source of the stink.

He figures the wood and rocks to be for his fire — he’s not sure what to think about mer hospitality — but what’s he supposed to do with a fish? Is this the mer version of rations?

He sits back, puzzled. They don’t expect him to eat this raw, do they? He remembers Lance’s jagged teeth. _They_ definitely eat raw fish.

For the next few minutes he tends to his tenuous source of light, thinking furiously. He needs to get out of this alive and back to his ship. The mer might be friendly, but he can’t get the image of sharp, jagged teeth, and hard, curling claws out of his head. Lance needs him for _something_ , he’s sure, but until he’s sure of _what_ , he can’t use it to his advantage. 

Will the mer come— Lotor frowns into the colored driftwood fire. Of course the mer will return, he wants something. But when? And how? 

And driftwood fire is toxic. Does Lance know that?

Lotor turns to survey the cave. The entrance is probably underwater, he thinks, fighting off an emotion that tastes suspiciously like despair. There’s no way out except through the mer, so he needs to get into Lance’s good graces.

He _needs_ to get out.

*

“You’re crazy, I hope you realize that.”

“Sure, sure,” Lance says, slapping Hunk’s tail with his own. “Just follow me.”

“ _Why_ are we going towards a ship? Just because it’s not a hunting ship doesn’t mean the sailors don’t have spears! And that walker you saved— Are you _trying_ to get killed?” 

“Shhhhhhh!” Lance says, instead, drawing to a stop directly beneath the ship in question. They are deep, deep enough that sunlight is sparse, but not so dark that they can’t see the chain from the ship’s anchor, on their right.

The chain is evidently spooking Hunk, so Lance grabs Hunk’s shoulders and spins him away from it. “We’re deep enough that their machines probably can’t pick us up. Now listen. First of all, thanks for answering my call. Second of all, I need you to keep an eye on this ship. This is Lotor’s ship, and I need to keep track of it. He won’t help us—” Hunk raises an eyebrow with such vigor that Lance winces “—ok, he won’t help _me_ if I can’t promise his safe return. He’s not dumb or uncooperative like the last walkers we— _I,_ dammit, Hunk — I caught, so I need to know where this ship goes. Sing if it moves, and follow it. Okay?”

“You’re crazy.” Hunk eyes the ship above them. He picks at a scale on his arm. “This is _crazy_ ,” he emphasizes, whipping his tail to create a slipstream that knocks Lance off-balance. Hunk is of the manta aspect, so even a casual slipstream drove home quite the point. “You’re sure he can help the search?”

“Positive.”

“All I have to do is stay here and call if it moves?”

“Yeah!”

“...Do I _have_ to follow it?”

“Look,” Lance says, exasperated, “This is the first solid lead anyone’s got since that old lady by the shore croaked, ok?”

“' _Anyone_ '. You really think you’ve got it, huh,” Hunk says, but he doesn’t sound entirely skeptical. He sounds like he wanted to be convinced. 

“Yes,” Lance says, trying to put all his conviction behind the word. “I know you might not feel it—it’s really faint—but someone on that ship has something of our’s, and civility is the way to go here. I need you to watch it.”

Hunk’s expression wavers. “Alright, fine. But you’d better work quick — if Pidge finds out what you’re doing…”

Lance’s mood sours, too. They know what happened to Matt, and the subsequent fallout in the pod. “I’ll try my best to wrap this up fast. I don’t want drama. I just want this to be over.”

Hunk sighs, expelling a stream of bubbles. “I’ll keep an eye on the ship. Go do… whatever it is you’re doing.”

Lance flashes him a grin before he leaves. “Thanks, brother.”

*

Ezor is directing cleanup and maintenance of the deck. Zethrid is hard at work on the radio, and half her engineers are coaxing the engine into higher efficiency. Acxa had assigned a crew member to be Narti’s assistant in looking over their scientific equipment. All in all, progress is being made. 

Acxa stares unseeingly at the maps laid out on the table. She’s ostensibly charting potential routes to port, but she’s long realized they won’t make it anywhere on the fuel they have unless Zethrid and her engineers manage to fix their engine. 

The only problem left is Lotor. How are they going to look for him?

A knock on the door pulls her out of her reverie.

It’s the assistant. She can’t recall his name. ...Thandor? Threk?

“The scientist says all the equipment can still perform. Is the experiment go?”

Oh, good. At least they can honor Lotor’s memory, if he’s dead. _God, I hope not_ , Acxa thinks. _I don’t want to deal with Honerva_.

*

“You don’t eat fish?” is the first thing Lance says, upon emerging from the water.

“I don’t eat raw fish,” Lotor corrects. He forges ahead before he loses his nerve. “What do you want with me? People will start looking for me soon. I need to return to my ship before they contact my father.”

He never likes playing that card. However, he reasons, a mer might be frightened into complying if he tells them his father is “Hunter of the Depths” Zarkon.

*That cringe-worthy title was given to Zarkon by the tabloids. Mer don’t leave corpses, so PR had a blast spinning the narrative they wanted, doling out exclusive viewings like a king granting boons. But supernatural news in this day and age… it still only attracted the lowest, shittiest tabloids.

And of course, he is a hundred percent certain the girls _won’t_ alert his father. They hate Zarkon as much as he does. He’s more concerned with them unanchoring from their spot and moving off (leaving him behind) than anything else. If they’ve moved, can Lance still find the ship?

“Your father?” Lance says, splashing water everywhere as he drags his tail onto land. “And who is that?”

He sounds _way_ too interested. Less certain of his strategy but seeing no other way out, Lotor says, praying it’ll work, “He’s the Hunter. He’s Zarkon.”

And— instead of fear, Lance’s body lights up exactly the same way as before, if a little more subdued. His fins flare up, his tail trashes in the water, and his eyes widen, firelight glinting off the mirror-dark orbs. “ _Zarkon_ ? The hunter is your _father_?”

Then he pauses. He cuts a rather dramatic silhouette. He’s drawn himself up in excitement, out of the firelight, and in his stillness his lights float in mid-air, a ghostly figure.

“Thats, like, a pod-parent, right?” A claw curls around his chin, scattering colored reflections around the walls. “He’s important to you. And you are important to him.”

Lotor holds back a snort. Puts on the most serious face he can muster. “His blood is my blood.” Mer bleed, he’s seen this. Hopefully they place equal value on blood relations.

Lance’s expression doesn’t change. “Do you people care a lot about that?”

...This...is turning into a cultural exchange. (Not that Lotor doesn’t appreciate it. If ‘pod’ is a reference to the social structure of dolphins, whatever the mer have is healthier than the nuclear family.) “We do,” he lies, “and I don’t know what my father will do once he finds out that—”

“This is _great,_ ” Lance interrupts, still far too cheerful to have caught Lotor’s true meaning. “So if I hold you hostage, will Zarkon stop hunting us?”

Lotor blinks. 

Several things click together in his head.

When the laughter bubbles out of him, he doesn’t stop it.

“You think—” The more he laughs, the more it comes out jagged. He cuts himself off with a sneer. “You think my father is going to stop hunting, his _life’s work_ , for me?”

Lance looks puzzled. It’s a good look on him. Droplets of water still cling to his eyelashes. They sparkle.

“We can do it another way, of course. You’re important to him, so maybe you can convince him.” 

Lance has brought himself down to Lotor’s level. He rests on his coils, looking painfully earnest. 

Not for the first time, Lotor finds his hatred for Zarkon boiling up. Even these creatures assume the best of his family. These beautiful creatures, slaughtered by his father on his mother’s whim. 

He gives up the pretense, slumping back onto the rocks, turning his gaze away from Lance and his liquid eyes. At his movement, Lance tilts his head.

Irritably, Lotor wonders if the mer can tone down the lightshow. His mind won’t stop studying it, especially the patterns that trail down his torso.

“It won’t work,” he says.

The fire crackles between the silence. 

“Why not?”

He sighs violently. “You can’t use me that way. Zarkon doesn’t care.” He thinks it over, then corrects himself. “He _won’t_ care.”

Maybe if they caught Honerva instead… But she never goes out to sea. Ever.

The first signs of doubt are creeping onto Lance’s features. “But you said—”

“He doesn’t care.”

“Isn’t he your pod-parent?”

“That doesn’t mean anything.”

“Alright. Could you talk to him, then?”

“I just said,” Lotor can hear his own voice rising and doesn’t try to keep it down. Who’ll hear him? “He _doesn’t care_!”

All the mirth is gone from Lance now. His fins are pressed close to his body, dark. His eyes are narrowed in calculation, his arms crossed. “So you’re saying, you can’t stop him from sacrificing us.”

“No, I can’t,” Lotor snaps, then stops. “Wait. What do you mean, sacrifice?”

Lance opens his mouth to respond, and a change overcomes him from head to tail.

If his earlier lightshow is of joy, then this one is of anger. The spines snap upright, spread wide like a cat fluffing up its fur to appear larger. His crown fins flare wide. The nictitating membrane Lotor had caught sight of earlier slides over Lance’s eyes. Most shocking of all, a slit of white opens down the middle of his pupils, turning a previously inquisitive expression into one of inhuman alarm.

A faint noise is echoing through the cave. Lotor can’t make it out. 

“What the _fuck_?” Lance says, sounding completely dumbfounded. He turns away from Lotor, staring into the cave. His crown fins twitch. With another stunned look at Lotor he dives into the water. 

A second later he emerges, furious. “What did you do? What were you hiding on the ship? What the _fuck,_ I thought you were better than the rest of those blumfucks! Is this some sort of trap? You thought you’d record our calls for help and then _play it back at us_ ? Like, like some sort of twisted _lure_?”

What?

Lance is spitting mad. When he dove into the water earlier, the coils of his tail had gone with him. Now, he rises into the air, towering over Lotor, he looks like a god from one of Honerva’s tapestries — enraged, vengeful, sloughing water, a maw of sharp teeth.

“You absolute worm shit! You piece of garbage! I can’t believe I ever—” He spits out the talking-bone and keeps screaming at Lotor.

Flinching away, hands, raised, Lotor waits for the attack that doesn’t come. Lance simply continues the vocal onslaught, but Lotor soon realizes it’s just as effective.

He’s not underwater, though he imagines the full effect would be worse. The fluting, high-pitched noises of Lance’s native tongue had been startling when he was just talking normally. Now, pissed off and shouting, there’s a guttural, warbling quality to his words, and it all layers with the echoes of the cave to create a truly claustrophobic effect.

The cacophony is enough to make his head hurt.

It’s more effective than any thrown rock.

Suddenly, Lance falls quiet.

Lotor chances a look. 

Lance appears wholly focused on a distant spot in the cave, the spines on his back quivering with the effort of his concentration. Then he whirls back to Lotor, bites out one last fluting shriek that sets Lotor’s teeth aching, and dives into the water.

Lotor thinks he knows what happened. Acxa must’ve gone ahead with the planned experimental broadcast.

(His ears still ring with Lance’s words.)

Lance doesn’t resurface.

*

“Huh,” Ezor says, an elbow on the back of Narti’s chair. “I didn’t know fish did that.”

“The recording is high-pitched and rapid,” Zethrid points out. “We already know fish make their own noise, so it makes sense they’d react to outside input.”

“I know about noise pollution, Z,” Ezor rolls her eyes. “I’m saying I didn’t realize fish would react _this_ way.”

A reaction, indeed. Acxa frowns at Narti, who hasn’t moved an inch from the moment they turned on the fish finder and broadcasted the recording.

They expected scattering. They expected evasion. They didn’t expect _this_ : the second the broadcast went live, all the fish within the (surprisingly large) radius began to dart in short bursts in random directions, or hover in place as though stunned, or alternate between the two.

“Should we be worried?” Ezor says, chewing on a fingernail. “I mean, there was that one time mer fought back. Remember?”

How can Acxa forget? That hull had been torn to ribbons. The railing was warped beyond recognition. The cannons were dented as though hammered by a giant fist.

And then the stories her grandmother used to tell her… Those are just stories, she hopes.

Zethrid is frowning slightly, too. “I _told_ Lotor we should have kitted out.”

“We have the harpoons.” Acxa tries to make her voice strong. She’s not sure if she succeeded. 

Ezor scoffs. “Yeah, and only Lotor and Zethrid and maaaybe one or two in the crew can throw accurately.”

Mer never come up to the surface willingly. Honerva’s scientists don't know if mer are aware of the range of sonar and actively hide themselves — let’s face it, it’s probably that they can hear the sonar — but it’s notoriously hard to spot a mer with any human means. 

Zarkon uses a trawl net to hunt them, like commercial fishing nets.

“There’s one.” 

Narti’s quiet voice snaps Acxa out of her daydreams.

“Just one?” Zethrid whispers.

Narti fiddles with the knobs on the panel. “Deep.”

“Well, was it drawn here or was it already there?” Ezor is whispering too, as though it’ll help Narti hear better. 

Nonsensical as it is, Acxa hushes her voice too. “Is it moving?”

“Slowly.”

Then, “Away.”

Ezor frowns. Zethrid huffs out a breath.

Acxa asks the question that Lotor would’ve asked. “No response?”

They watch Narti for a few quiet seconds.

Narti whips off the head set. “Raise the anchor,” she says, with an urgency and volume none of them have heard before. Her pale blue eyes stare straight ahead. “Raise the anchor! Set the engine to maximum power! We need to move away!”

She spins around to face them when none of them reacts. “Acxa, Ezor, what are you standing there for? Get moving! Zethrid, engine!”

At her name, Zethrid leaps to motion, barrelling out of the room towards the aft. Ezor too bursts into action, running out of the room towards the main office where the PA system is. Acxa, for her part, seizes Narti’s arm and tries to lead her below decks.

It also gives her time to ask the important questions. “So they’re—”

“A whole pod, coming up from the deep. Go south. It’ll give us a head start. Perhaps.” Narti says, grimly, and shakes off Acxa’s hand. “I’m not going anywhere, Acxa. I need to record what happens next.”

Turning away to shout the direction at Ezor, who repeats it over the PA, sending a crew member racing towards the engine rooms, Acxa asks the question that’s been eating at her since she first heard the proposal. “What did we broadcast? What did Lotor record, Narti?”

“He snuck into a lab at the center and recorded a distress call.” Narti shakes her head. 

  
“Don’t blame him, Acxa. It’s the only recording he could get.”

*

Luckily, Lance is a fast swimmer.

He gets to Hunk just in time to see the ship reel in its anchor and begin to move. He also arrives just in time to throw himself in the line of Katie’s magic, aimed at the ship.

Ugly, green, and stinking of grief, it clouds his vision and clogs his hearing, and for a second he thinks she means to hurt him, but Katie reels it back at the last second. Dazed by the aftereffects, he doesn’t get the first word in.

“What are you doing?” It’s more a demand than a question. Katie comes right up into his face, so close their tails are in danger of tangling. “What was that? Why are you protecting them? Is this another of your _projects_ , Lance?”

Immediately, he feels his spines rise. “So what if it was? What are you going to do, send _me_ on a suicide mission?"

It’s a low blow, he knows it, and doesn’t regret using it. After Matt’s death, everyone treats Katie as though she’d dissolve in the slightest current. Was it the right choice? She’s only gotten more vicious towards him.

She shrieks at him. The sound bounces around in his head, rock-sharp. 

“Pidge! Pidge, calm down.” Hunk pushes them apart. “It’s no one’s fault, it’s just the walkers trying something new.”

While Katie glares at him over Hunk’s shoulder, Lance asks him, “What happened?”

The rest of the pod catches up to them, cutting off Hunk’s reply.

“Where’s the wounded?” asks Leifs. Her magic sits on one hand, sheathed for the moment.

“I don’t see a net,” says Rizavi. She scans the water, fins twitching when she sees nothing.

“They’re leaving,” Kinkade is glancing up, head cocked. He’s right. They can all hear the sound of a retreating ship. He glances at Sanda. “Engage?”

Sanda, a mer with the shark aspect, adjusts her grip on her trident and takes in the situation. “You were here when the distress call began?” She asks Hunk.

When Sanda asks a question, it gets answered. Chatter has it she clawed her way out of the reinforced nets three separate times, and the dents and chinks in her claws sure back up those claims.

"Y-yeah,” says Hunk, nervous at receiving Sanda’s full attention. “I, er,” he glances at Lance before continuing. “I was helping Lance with … a thing. The call for help came out of this small, box-machine that came from the ship. Like, the sound was stored inside and the opening on the box let it out. Not a very good copy, though. Up close you can easily tell it's warped.”

“Stored—” says Lance, eyes widening. He regrets shouting at Lotor now. Questions pop into his head, along with the bones of a new plan. 

He needs to go back, but first he has to deal with his pod.

“—and played back,” says Pidge, her anger dimming. Magic still sparks along her fins, tainted with the darkness of grief, but a little of her old self is shining through. “An echo device.”

“Yeah!” Hunk nods enthusiastically. 

“Could be some sort of lure,” says Leifs. “It gave me a damned shock when I heard it, like I was zapped by an eel. I couldn’t _not_ come.”

“It’d be a very effective lure,” says Rizavi, darkly. “If we can’t even trust cries for help…”

“He wouldn’t,” Lance says, under his breath and mostly to himself, but they heard him.

“‘He’?” Kinkade echoes, turning. “Who’s ‘he’?”

“Is that a hair accessory?” Pidge swipes at him. Lance dodges her grasping claws, scowling. “What are you up to?”

“What are you doing here anyway?” Leifs asks. “The storm’s dispersed. The magic’s gone. There’s nothing here except... that... empty cave.” Her green eyes widen. “It’s not empty, is it. Have you found something?”

Lance twists his tail nervously. Shit. “No, I just—”

“Is it something that can help? You’d better —,” Rizavi begins to say, except at that moment Sanda sweeps her trident through the water, silencing all of them. 

“Listen,” she says.

And they do. And Lance’s heart sinks.

It’s their conversation from a moment ago, played back at them, emanating from the ship that’s moved away. There’s a little distortion, whether from walker technology or because of the distance, but Lance hears the voices of his podmates, repeating their questions.

 _Where’s the wounded?_ says old-Leifs.

“What are they doing?” says now-Leifs, horrified.

 _I don’t see a net_ , says old-Rizavi.

“What’s the _point_?” says now-Rizavi, her spines standing on end at the distortion of her own voice. “They have the rituals, they have the scales— why do they need our voices, too?”

“Those _bastards!_ ” Kinkade snarls, magic flaring in a halo around him. He glances at his master for the cue, eyes blazing the effort of holding himself back. But Sanda doesn’t move.

“Maybe the Witch has discovered something new,” Katie says, dark and threatening, vibrating with leashed power. “In which case, we need to find out what.”

Lance won’t get a better chance than this. He blurts the only thing he knew would get all their attention. “I found Shiro’s scale.”

Everyone stops. Leifs freezes in place. Rizavi whips around, fast enough to create an eddy. Kinkade's magic goes out with a tactile _pop_. Katie freezes so hard she actually sinks a couple of feet.

“What?” She says, surging up. Conflicting emotions battled across her face, finally settling on an incredulous scorn. “No way. Keith is still out there, scouring the seven seas, and you found it in our backyard?” She throws an arm out, indicating the wide expanse of nothing.

“No,” Lance shakes his head. “There.” He points, up and away, towards the ship, where distorted echoes of their voices still played. Their gazes follow his arm.

Another beat of stunned silence.

“He...gave it away?” says Rizavi, disbelief coloring her voice. "To a walker?"

Before the Cult, before the Witch, when merfolk and land-folk were still on amicable terms, such things happened now and again. A good deed, a favor owed, and a mer would pluck off a single scale and gift it to the walker, turning the little piece of magic into a spell — whatever it may be: blessing, curse, ancestral memory, the scale will become, for it was the nature of things willingly given to hold meaning.

Until the Cult of the Deep discovered this, and began harvesting them. The scale of a mer was merely a small drop of magic, but a small drop of magic was still magic for land-folk who didn’t have any. So the mer retreated, withdrew, out of warm waters and the reach of spears, and didn’t have anything more to do with walkers.

At least, they tried to.

Now, Zarkon trawls the deep with his nets of metal and magic, foul and heavy and marked by the Witch’s stolen magic. Rituals, stolen from them, shakes the seafloor and disturbs their gods. Mer sorcerers lost sight of the future. 

With all this history, Lance understands why his people’s response to walkers has been either avoidant or confrontational. But their enemies are on land, and strange as depth-magic can be, a mer’s nature cannot be changed. None of them can grow legs. (There are stories, of course. But if such a spell existed, its methodology is lost to myth.) If they want to hunt down the Cult and its Witch, they _need_ walker allies. Shiro, Lance believes, understood that. And that’s why his scale is on a ship, with a walker, instead of floating around the oceans.

"Can't be," Leifs whispers, stunned. "Maybe they swiped some of it...?"

“Where is your proof that it's freely given?” Sanda asks, steely grey eyes pinning Lance in place. 

Lance flicks his fins towards the ship. “It’s faint, but if you go closer, you can feel a faint echo. No stink.” Stolen magic stank like gangrene.

Sanda turns to Leifs. “Go over and check, but keep clear of detection.”

Leifs nods, and then a shimmer of magic covers her from head to tail. Cloaked, she swims off.

“And you want to use the walker to get it back?” Hunk asks. He’s staring at Lance strangely, as though he’s put several things together and is drawing his own conclusion. Lance wants very badly to tell Hunk everything, to at least have him in his corner, but he’s jumped into the current, and can only follow it to the end.

Lance chances a glance at the rest. Rizavi and Kinkade sport differing levels of exasperation. Sanda looks thoughtful. Katie’s expression is as dark as a trench.

“That was the plan,” Lance replies carefully. “But I nabbed him because of chance, really. Whoever holds the scale is on that ship, and when the storm washed its captain overboard..." He mimes snatching something, then shrugs.

“If what you say is true,” Sanda begins, “then it changes a lot of things. The Council has been looking for Shirogane’s remaining scales for a long time. Do you have a plan?”

“The same.” Lance spreads his hands. Getting back to Lotor quickly is a lost cause. Right now, he needs to convince them he has it under control, then go back and… oh, fuck, plead with the walker on his tail bone, probably, until Lotor agrees to help. “Find a good time to approach the ship, use a talking-bone, get the scale back. I only wanted to see what was so important for the Witch to set a storm on. I didn’t expect to find Shiro’s missing scale.”

Before anyone can respond, Katie raises her head. 

“You’re just going to explain the situation and hope they help us out of the goodness of their souls, is that it?” she says, bitter and dismissive, and Lance loses the last scrap of his patience.

“Look— I know it’s my fault Matt died and I’m trying to make up for it here,” he says hotly, aware that the rest of them have started to drift uncomfortably away, “but at least I’m out here doing something, looking for a way to end this. What have you done except snipe at me?”

“You call this a solution? Chasing after freak storms, talking to no-tails, defending them?” Katie’s voice rises along with the color in her cheeks. “Matt gave his life to buy time for us to get away and what are you doing, running right back into their nets?” 

“Nets?” Lance echoes, then wrestles his voice back down. “Do you see nets here? No, you see the walkers trying something new. If we don’t find another way to deal with the Witch we’re _all_ going to go the same way Matt did, and a sinking load of good Matt’s sacrifice would be then!”

“He died because of _you_ !” Katie screams, tears gathering around her eyes. “Because of your _stupid_ plan to _pray_ to the old gods. If not for the delay Matt wouldn’t have needed to die! Nothing worked then and nothing will work now!”

“At least he saw things my way, so maybe you should get over yourself,” he snaps, and instantly knew he’d gone too far.

Hunk sighs. “That wasn’t very nice.”

“No,” Lance admits. “I’m sorry.”

Katie stares at him with no emotion in particular. Then a sob rips through her frame and she flees into the dark and the deep.

Rizavi watches her go and heaves a sigh. “I’ll make her something hot to drink.” She nods at Kinkade as she leaves.

Sanda drifts back. “Done squabbling? Alright. Tell me about your plan, Lance. All of it.”

Lance opens his mouth, sorting through the different approaches and how he’s going to lay it out, when a sound ripples through the water like the clear note of a conch shell, except it isn’t really a sound, and they didn’t hear it with their ears.

Lance wilts, and covers his face with his hands. “You all felt that, didn’t you.”

“The summoning?” Kinkade says. Lance doesn’t have to see to know he’s smirking. “You hid a no-tail, and you gave him a summoning charm, and this was supposed to be part of that plan of your’s, isn’t it?”

“...Yes.”

“And now he’s gone and wasted it because he couldn’t sit still for an hour.”

“Oh, shut up.”

“He could’ve used it for something worse, this Lotor,” says Hunk, trying for reassurance and falling somewhere between patronizing and relief. “Hey, Leifs is back.”

Lance looks up. Leifs’ petite figure — she’s of the eel aspect, like him, more tail than person — draws closer. “It’s Shiro’s scale. But the signature is sort of … muffled. I had to get really close. Close enough that the sun got on my hair.” She tugs at one of the pale strands of her hair. “And what was that, just now? Felt like a summoning. Who was it for?”

“Shall we go with you?” There’s a hint of amusement in Sanda’s voice.

“Maybe just Hunk,” Lance replies, weary of the day. And it isn’t even noon yet. The force of it sends twin streams of bubbles past his face. “I’ll keep you updated, Sanda.”

“See that you do,” she says. Then, to Kinkade, “Do you have a talking-bone?” (He nods, and retrieves three from his bag.)

“Shall we…” Hunk sweeps a hand in the direction of the cave.

“Follow me,” Lance sighs.

*

“I was beginning to suspect it didn’t work,” Lotor says dryly, when Lance finally drags himself ashore and helps himself to a talking-bone. He holds up the scale for the mer to see. After swirling it in the cave water for a few seconds, he had stopped, feeling foolish; the scale seemed less luminescent. Then he had waited, but not for long.

Did Lance glance his way? With no sclera, it’s hard to tell.

“You look… more sodden then is normal,” he continues, examining Lance’s drooping fins. “If my experiment caused this, I’m terribly sorry.”

“We have company,” is all Lance says, then gathers up the coils of his tail and slumps over them like a sullen teenager.

Lotor sits up straighter. He doesn’t realize until the second, yellow-hued mer emerges from the water that Lance had positioned himself in such a way that the new arrival makes a triangle on his small slice of dry rock. 

But the yellow one doesn’t come on land, like Lance. He merely props himself on his elbows by the water’s edge, takes a stone, and smiles at Lotor, no teeth. “Hello! Your experiment gave us a big shock, but we sorted it out.”

Larger than his friend, (at least, Lotor hopes Lance is his ally in this,) the new arrival sports the similar smattering of scales on his cheekbones, neck, and arms, except he has smooth crown-fins, nothing like Lance’s, which are segmented and webbed. The shape of his scales are different, as well. His are elliptical, rounded at the edges. Lance’s scales are sharp, teardrop-shaped. The dark liquid eyes, though, and the hint of sharp teeth, are the same.

“Lance, that can’t be comfortable,” says the newcomer.

“I make do.”

“You’re just sulking that Sanda dragged your pet project into public business.”

“Why didn’t you help me back there? You were fine with me being all secretive before.”

“Ah, but note: I never approved.”

Lance sighs into his coils.

Lotor clears his throat to remind them he’s still here.

Almost begrudgingly, Lance turns to him. “So. Back to what you can do for me.”

His eyes are hooded in annoyance. His voice is low with irritation. His tone is curt from impatience. Lotor tells himself all this, to distract from how the driftwood’s blue flame has turned Lance’s scales into glittering jewels and the angles of his face into a painting. In a different context, the unhappy curl of his body could easily be suggestive. The fire throws strange shadows on the dip of his back.

Lance raises an eyebrow. “We’ve established you can’t reach the Hunter. Then, can you talk to the Witch?”

“Who?” Lotor says. He can hear the capitalization in Lance’s tone. Suspicion begins to creep up on him.

The mer exchange a look. 

Slowly, Lance sits up. “Tell me what you know about the Cult of the Deep.”

Lotor’s a little thrown. Acxa’s the one that had dealings with them, he wants to say, but the twin expressions of expectation on their faces tell him deflecting would be the incorrect answer. 

“I know they were a group of religious fanatics straight out of Lovecraft. Believed in the awakening of the Old Gods — not the same names as the Mythos, of course, but identical in principle.” Lotor takes in their expressions: patient, expectant. He continues. “They worshipped a sea god in particular—”

“Did they call her anything?” interrupts the yellow mer. His scales glint green in the driftwood fire.

“I don’t know,” Lotor admits, then makes a note to ask Acxa, when he next sees her. “Not Dagon. It was prettier.”

White hair, he suddenly remembers. White hair, blue eyes, grey skin. Honerva has a tapestry of a goddess like that in her study. But Honerva isn't involved in any cult business. Her brand of madness is her own — isn’t it?

“Go on, what else do you know?” Lance prompts, brow furrowed. It makes him look, incongruously, like an angry rabbit.

Blinking, Lotor picks up where he left off. “The Cult wanted to bring their goddess into-” That’s not quite right. He puzzles over it. What had Acxa called it? “They wanted to invoke their goddess. Wake her up, put her inside a child, glean her blessings with ease. For that, they devised a ritual. It involved—”

It got ugly. Police were involved. An old woman drowned. “—a lot of fish scales, and a lot of hair. They didn’t succeed,” he says, shortly. His gaze flicks to his two audience members, watching them for a reaction. “As far as I know, that was a fringe group. The main Cult members distanced themselves from the fiasco after the fact, and set up shop somewhere else in the country.”

They watched him back. And as he spoke, Lotor realizes what they wanted him to understand. “You think Sincline Shipyards is the new head of the Cult of the Deep? Don’t be ridiculous.” In his surprise and anger, he had gotten to his feet. He glares down at Lance, but the mer only looks at him with lazy, hooded eyes.

“That’s exactly what we’re saying. Who d’you think told Zarkon about us?” Lance asks.

“Who told him to lace his nets with spells?” asks the yellow one.

“His advisory board, I expect,” says Lotor, then, “Spells?”

“Who told the Hunter where to look?” asks Lance.

“Why does he hunt us?” asks the yellow one.

“I don’t-” Lotor sputters, then, sharply, “My mother, I expect. The crazy woman was always spouting mythical nonsense, even when I was a child, and needed looking after. She likes your scales, I expect, and that’s why Zarkon hunts you.”

“And,” Lance rises up on his coils like a cobra about to strike. He towers over Lotor. “What did you just do, with the scale I gave you?”

A deep, sepulchral silence descends on the cave.

“That- I- It was just coincidence, that you arrived!” Lotor protests, but his heart isn’t in it. When he dipped the scale in the water, he had felt a thrum go out, not quite a vibration and not quite a sound, as though someone had sounded an infrasonic gong.

“Are you saying,” he finally begins, throat dry, “that my mother is the Witch?”

The yellow one hums noncommittally. Lance shrugs a shoulder, a smooth shadow of a movement, scales shining oil-slick iridescent. “What else are we supposed to think?”

“But she’s—” Lotor begins, and then he thinks of the study he’s never allowed in, the altars and the jars of bones and scales and congealed blood, the suits he catches coming and going from the advisor’s room...

“This goddess that the Cult is trying to raise,” he says, “does she have… long white hair?” 

Lance tilts his head, bird-like. “Moon-silver tresses like a waterfall.”

“Blue eyes?”

“Said to be as deep as the sea,” supplies the yellow mer.

“Dusty skin and pink scales?”

They nod grimly. “Like the dusk and the dawn.”

“And with two—” Lotor indicates his legs with a sweep of his hand, not quite sure if he’s gotten it right. 

“Two tails,” says the yellow mer. He’s not smiling anymore. “That’s the one.”

Lotor’s heart sinks. 

“But a melusine is a freshwater spirit,” he tries to argue. He skips over the part about how folk spirits aren’t real — he’s staring at two different kinds of ‘mermaids’. A debate about metaphysical existence seems rude in front of them. “This is an ocean. Saltwater.”

“Exactly,” says Lance, gravely. No, not just grave. Resigned, and angry. “She’s not supposed to be here, but when the old cult started hunting us for our scales, we had to adapt. Left some stuff behind.”

Lotor can’t quite stifle his incredulous laugh. “A goddess?” They used to be freshwater? Exactly how long ago was the Cult assembled? “How do you leave a goddess behind?”

Lance sinks back onto his coils. “Put her to sleep, all quiet-like, that’s how.”

“It’s what the stories say, anyway,” offers the yellow one. “That we put our gods to sleep, then we packed and moved.”

“You should see our cousins,” Lance snarks, “down in the Deep. Don’t look a thing like us anymore. Still closer to our gods then we are.”

“Halfway children, is what we are.” The yellow one sighs, long and slow. “I’ve been rude, Lotor. You can call me Hunk. I don’t know your full name, so we’re even. Forgive the impoliteness.”

Still processing their words, Lotor merely nods at Hunk. Then he says, wonderingly, “‘Trench-gods’, you said to me, Lance. Is that what you were referring to?”

“Altea’s no trench-god,” scoffs the mer. “She belongs in the light, but the Cult gathered up all her acolytes a long time ago. So, now, no one really knows where she belongs. And because of _that_ ,” he surges up, a fire in his eyes, spines and fins flared, “your Witch wants to wedge herself into the gap between our gods and us, using _our magic_!”

“And we’re looking—”

“Hunk!”

“What? You wanted him on our side, you wanted to talk him into it, so I’m talking!”

Lance sinks back down to eye level, lowering his fins. “Fine.”

“You’re looking for?” Lotor prompts. He’s getting to the heart of the matter, and he’s more and more sure their interests align. 

Hunk turns to face him. A little slit opens in his pupils as he says, “We’re looking for the lost scales of Her last acolyte. They would be small, and black. Shaped like—”

“Shaped like mine,” Lance says, extending a hand so close to the fire that the moisture dries off his scales, and they shine dully, each a different shade of black. “He was the last of the koi aspects.”

Freshwater.

“What does it do, once you’ve gathered them all?” Lotor asks, throat dry. He thinks he knows where to find these scales.

“We don’t know,” says Hunk.

“Maybe nothing,” says Lance. And then he adds, viciously, “Maybe how to stop the Witch. Maybe how to kill her, even from here.”

Does he want to kill Honerva?

Lotor tries to remember the last time she’s ever done anything nice for him. He digs and digs, until his mind offers up the paltry, half-faded memory of a birthday celebration by the beach, decades ago. He lingers over the dim images, unsure of what he wants to find, and finally realizes it wasn’t even _his_ party. She had only brought him there. 

Then nothing.

Does he want to kill his mother? _Maybe_ , he thinks, _maybe I want to be convinced._

“I might,” his voice cracks, but he forges ahead. “I know where you can find these scales.”

Once he explains things to Acxa, surely something can be arranged. He looks up.

Hunk holds his gaze steadily. Lance tilts his head to the side. He’s swaying again. Lotor tamps down the smile. “But first, how do you plan to get me out of here?”

“You just made a deal, walker,” says Hunk, with a note of warning.

“I think I know what I’m dealing with,” Lotor replies, remembering the care with which the two navigated the exchange of names. “I can’t promise you the Witch. I can’t promise you the scales. But I can get you to both of those things.”

Lance snorts. “What are you gonna do, scoop one of us into a tank and wheel that around?”

“Not a bad idea, if being a trophy sits well with you,” Lotor says, feeling confident enough to give Lance a roguish smile. And what a trophy he would make! Except, of course, if what they said is to be believed, Zarkon would pluck him like a pheasant.

Lance stills.

Hunk clears his throat. “That’ll be good enough for now. As for getting out of here, you have two options: a breathing-stone, good for about ten breaths, or…” A strange look flits across his face. He looks at Lance. “How did you get him here in the first place?”

“Oh, easy!” Lance springs back into motion. “I knocked him out and then I kissed him.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm currently swamped with college work and will be unable to find any time to properly finish anything, but it is my hope that when things calm down some, I can come back to this and wrap up the ending. As it stands, there won't be any big twists to the story, and it will stay a one-shot.


End file.
